From Bajor to the Black, and The Universe Doesn't Cheat
by StarSword-C
Summary: Written for LC66.2 on the Star Trek Online forums. Asked why she originally joined Starfleet, Captain Kanril Eleya of the USS Bajor starts reminiscing about her past, from what brought her to the military on up to becoming a Starfleet commanding officer. Also included is the one-shot "The Universe Doesn't Cheat", detailing her run through the Kobayashi Maru.
1. From Bajor to the Black, Part I

**From Bajor to the Black**

_Just a small town girl  
Livin' in a lonely world  
She took the midnight train  
Goin' anywhere_  
— "Don't Stop Believin'", Journey

How'd I get here? How did I enter Starfleet? You really want to know?

Nothing really Bajor-shaking, honestly. I didn't have any relative who died gloriously in battle. Okay, yeah, my father fought in the Resistance, and _his_ father even died in the Kendra Valley Massacre, but Kanril Torvo made it out of the Occupation with his skin mostly intact and didn't join the Militia afterward. And it wasn't patriotism, I think, though that's one of my reasons for staying nowadays.

The lifestyle? Oh, Hell no! Let's face it, it sucks a lot of the time. The "strange new worlds" they show you in the recruitment vids are the good days; the rest of them are "woohoo, another average star with a bunch of dead rocks orbiting it". And I don't like really like killing people, although I'm very good at it.

You want to know how I ended up in Starfleet? This is how.

* * *

_Satar 4, Seventh Era 943, Year of the Unseen Harp (June 8, 2397 Earth Standard)_

This wasn't the reaction I expected. Anger I could deal with. Acceptance would be great. Active support? Even better.

Instead, the look of silent hurt on my boyfriend's face just bores into my soul and breaks my heart.

"Why?" That's the only word he says.

I let out a breath. "Because I want to."

"We had plans. Alhare University?"

"Dammit, Tiho, that was _your_ plan. You got a guaranteed full ride to the temple schools because your uncle's a vedek. I don't have that luxury, and I don't agree with their politics anyway. But I do my four and get out and I get my own guaranteed full ride, any public university on Bajor. And I want to be able to look back at my life and be able to say I had an adventure."

He scoffs. "You sound like a _phekk'ta_ recruitment ad."

"Militia's the only adventure I get paid to go on. My folks can't afford the public unis and all the temple schools around here push the Orthodox branch like it's going out of style."

"Deal with it."

"I don't have the patience, you should know that by now. It's either the Militia or I spend the rest of my life running conduit. Hell, Father's already having me help him on the job; he can't move as well as he used to. I want more than that out of my life."

"Why don't you tell me the truth? You just want to get out of Priyat, El."

"That a crime? This town's dying. Half the town just lives here because it's close to Kendra City."

"Look, just call the recruiter up, tell him you changed your mind. I'll talk to my uncle—"

"The scholarship's only for relatives, you know that. I'm going Militia, Tiho."

"Then you're going where I can't follow."

I glare at him but he's unmoved. "_Sao'phekk'tel ar bekral!_" I scream at him, then storm out of his bedroom and down the stairs.

His mother catches me in the parlor pulling my coat on. "Eleya, what—"

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Nas. I … I can't be here anymore." I throw the door open and run out into the snow. I struggle to keep the tears back but they flow anyway.

* * *

"Where's Tiho?" Father asks me two days later. "I thought he'd be here for this."

"He's not coming."

He pauses in the middle of loading my second suitcase into his battered old Cardassian-built groundcar, a leftover from the Occupation. "He broke up with you?"

"I broke up with _him_." Okay, that's a lie; I'm trying to salvage some pride here. He gives me a questioning look. "He made it very clear it was either the Militia or him. _Se'phekk_ him."

"Language, El." He hefts the suitcase into the back of the car and closes the door, then sighs. "Look, I'll have a talk with him—"

"No, Father, just … don't. If he decides he wants to talk to me again, he'll call."

It's an hour and a half on a two-lane ferrocrete road from Priyat to Kendra City, the closest shuttleport and the only big city in the entire province. The stark brown Cardassian architecture is a sharp contrast to the mostly wood and mud-brick of my hometown. We park at the shuttleport and lug my suitcases through the checkpoints. Father sweeps me into a bear hug. "My little girl, all grown up," he says into my hair.

"When are you coming home, Big Sis?"

I break away from Father and stoop a bit to hug my thirteen-year-old sister. Even after she hit her growth spurt a month or so later she was never as tall as I was. "Not for a while, Teri."

"Mother and I made you a box of jumja sticks." My mouth starts watering and I hug her again.

The P.A. system chimes and a female voice with an Ashallan accent announces, "Attention, all passengers for Samren Provincial Shuttleport Flight 323. First-class passengers, please proceed to the gate."

"That's my flight. I've gotta get in line."

Mother grabs me and kisses me on both cheeks. "You be safe."

"Mother, I'll be fine."

"You're still a seventeen-year-old girl. You be careful, understand me?"

"Yes, _Mother_."

"And don't take that tone. Now go on, before I start crying and embarrass us both."

The seat is in coach, all a government ticket will pay for, and it's cramped as hell. I manage to get comfortable and nod off as we take off, but it's a suborbital so it's barely twenty minutes before the overweight Boslic in the seat next to me shakes me awake and says we're there. I collect my bags and exit the airport, and a gray-uniformed Surface Arm sergeant meets me and points to a bus painted in grassland drab. It's as utilitarian as my father's truck, but the fuel cells are Federation manufacture so it runs cleaner and sounds a hell of a lot quieter. One of the male recruits in the seat in front of me starts flirting with me. He's not my type so I ignore him and pass out again.

Militia basic training is held at Camp Li, a base in the Kolharis Range named for one of the heroes of the Resistance, a man who died defending Deep Space 9 with the Emissary during Jaro Essa's coup attempt in 2370. The surrounding mountains were plundered by the spoonheads for deposits of duranium and heavy metals, and they blew the top off Mount Bahatan with a battleship's main disruptor to turn it into a landing field for orbital cargo lifters headed to Terok Nor. The effects on the terrain make it a good training ground.

My waist-length hair is the first thing to go. It's infuriating but there's a reason for it—too easy for it to get caught in something. We also have to take our earrings off when we're working. And we're technically not allowed to bring outside food on base, but I bribe Staff Sergeant Tem with a quarter of the box of jumja sticks and she lets me keep the rest. They still don't last two weeks.

Five months of frequently hellish training follows. Physical training. Hand-to-hand combat. Guns, knives. Mental conditioning techniques we learned from the Cardassians. Technical skill assessments and lessons. _tlhIngan Hol_ and Cardassian language lessons.

I keep hoping for Tiho to call. He never does. I check my messages every day for two months, but he never does. One day I stop checking, and lose my virginity with a guy in my training platoon in the cargo compartment of an IFV. Turns out sex is a lot of fun, who knew?

Three months in, they make me a squad leader. I wonder if they're grooming me for something. Turns out they've decided I have "leadership qualities" and put me in charge of a team for Hell Week. They fly us out to Serpent's Ridge in Dakhur Province, eight days by foot away from the nearest civilization, give us compasses, guns, and four days' food and water, and tell us to hoof it to Camp Shakaar. Oh, you get an emergency beacon, too, but you press it and you lose. No real penalty other than your pride, but it affects your placement in the service.

I grit my teeth and bear it. Father somehow found time to make sure his girls could survive in the wilderness. I was twelve, she was eight. I'm one of about a dozen out of the original hundred to make it to day six but then I step in a hara cat burrow and break my ankle. Hurts like hell but the disappointment I feel hurts worse, even though Gunny Lemri says I did fine.

Graduation. My initial training company of over a thousand has been whittled down to three hundred, and of my original squad I'm the only one left. I struggle not to fidget as the graduating recruits are listed off. My royal blue dress uniform itches and doesn't fit right, too tight across the chest. I think my breasts grew a little since the start of boot camp.

"Lance Corporal Kanril Eleya!" Gunny Elwar, a one-eyed gray-hair who joined the Militia the year I was born, barks my name. "Congratulations, you're going blackside. Republic of Bajor Starship _Kira Nerys_, Tactical Department. You're shooting the big guns, girl."

I really hate it when he calls me 'girl'.

"_Balus kren!_" he bellows across the field at the end.

"_Balus kren!_" three hundred voices shout back. It's been the Militia's war cry for thirty years. In Dakhuri dialect it means "Never again!"

* * *

That's the real story, Mr. Sisko. Nothing drew me to space specifically. I joined the Militia to get out of the town I was born in, to get a job and a college education. I was _sent_ to space, because the Bajoran Militia in its infinite wisdom decided that's where my skills lay. As for how Starfleet picked me up? Well, back then there were already movements in the Chamber of Ministers to shut down Space Arm. "We can't afford it, it's just a silly national pride thing, and they're less effective than Starfleet anyway," the Conservative Association said. "The Feds can't be everywhere and they won't fight for us as hard as we'll fight for ourselves," the Nationalists said. Politics as usual.

In the end, like so many other things in life, it came down to money. Bajor was plundered so thoroughly during the Occupation that for several years afterward we could barely feed ourselves, never mind contributing anything to the outside world. Even nowadays most of the Republic's income comes from being a trade hub—by the terms of the Bajoran Wormhole Treaty we get a cut of everything that goes through Deep Space 9 and the Celestial Temple—so we're a lot more vulnerable to shifts in the galactic economy than other planets. With the economic recession in 2400 the money just wasn't there anymore, and the Socialists joined with the Conservatives when the shutdown bill hit the Chamber floor. Space Arm would be decommissioned, effective Ilrani 7E947, or June 2401 the way you humans write the calendar.

* * *

_Ilrani 11, Seventh Era 947, Year of Ill-Timed Truth_

As the _Kira _pulls into a parking orbit over Bajor at the end of her final voyage I'm paged to the command deck. I file through the old Breen _Chok Thol_-class frigate's cramped corridors, squeezing past a pair of corpsmen and stopping to let Captain Azro from Engineering past me. "Sarge," he says by way of greeting.

"Captain." I watch him leave and resist the urge to eye his backside. He's a decent guy; I've liked him since I came aboard three and a half years ago. Pretty cute, too; if he wasn't a zero I might have asked him out.

I push past a pair of armed security guys taking the stardust smugglers we bagged on our last patrol to the shuttlebay in shackles, squeeze into the turbolift next to four familiar faces, and request the bridge. The lifters squeal a bit as the car rises five decks to the top of the ship, then the door slides open on the bridge. I've seen vids of Federation starship bridges. They're _huge_. This is anything but: twelve people collapsed into a room not much more than five by four meters. And what passes for Colonel Karryn's ready room must've been a broom closet in a former lifetime. Lieutenant Fadil, the tactical officer, points to the door and I knock. "Enter!"

I step inside and come to attention and Karryn Retta remotely closes the door. The CO's close to Mother's age, with dark skin, graying black hair and an old scar on her jawline from the last years of the Occupation. I salute, both in deference to her rank and in gratitude for her Resistance work, but she doesn't look up. "Sergeant Kanril Eleya, reporting as ordered, ma'am."

"Have a seat, Sergeant," she says, still not looking up. About a minute in I start fighting the urge to fidget before she finally lays down a much-abused PADD and stylus and apologizes for the delay. "By some dubious work of the Prophets there seems to be more paperwork involved in shutting a unit down than in running it."

"Ma'am?"

"Never mind." She leans back in her chair and I can see the fatigue in her eyes. "I've been going down the list of my NCOs now that Bajor's handing space over to Starfleet. Same question for you as the rest, Kanril. What are you planning to do next?"

"Honestly, I'm not sure, ma'am."

"Says on your recruitment record you were interested in the Ahuar Zorn scholarship after serving your term."

"That was four years ago, ma'am."

She nods. "It's still on the table, though: You can muster out, go to college. Door number two, you ship over, go back to Mount Bahatan and get recertified in another specialty. You're a good shooter, could turn peacekeeper or infantry, or you could do another electronics route."

"Either way, I'll probably never be in the black again," I answer in a sad tone.

Her lips twist and her eyes smile. "Ah, a-ha-ha. So _that's_ what you really want, Sarge. We can work with that. Door number three? An inter-service transfer order."

I stare at her. "Starfleet?"

"No, the Dominion. Of course, Starfleet."

"You think they'd take me?"

"You're qualified, and you'll skip most of the training since we read from the same manual, more or less. You could practically just change uniforms and hop the morning transport to DS9. But there's another possibility you should consider."

She picks up the PADD again, taps it a few times with her stylus, and then passes it to me. There's a form on the screen, an application to a certain service academy's Officer Candidate School program, with all my information pre-loaded. "Starfleet Academy, ma'am?" I ask for confirmation in surprise.

"Your aptitude scores are good enough you can take the quals, and I'm certain you'll pass them. Starting as an NCO you'll be an ensign in eighteen months. Hell, eight years from now you could have your own ship! Better one than this piece of crap," she adds, smacking a suddenly flickering light panel with a fist.

Badmouthing your own ship? "Colonel—"

"Well, let's face it, this is an eighty-year-old secondhand Breen frigate. I love her but I've got no illusions about it. Prophets, she wasn't exactly state-of-the-art even when she was brand-new, and all the jury-rigging we keep having to do doesn't help overmuch as you well know. Starfleet's just plain got better toys. But enough about me, let's talk about you. Where do you see yourself this time next week?"

I say nothing. I originally enlisted because I wanted to get out of Priyat and be able to say I had an adventure before I settled down. And the guaranteed full ride was a nice bonus. But being out here in space? About a year in I discovered I loved it. Sure, it's boring a lot of the time, especially in my department, but it's beautiful. I never get tired of looking at it.

I want to stay in the black.

I _really_ want to stay.

Next thing I know I've taken the stylus, scribbled a signature on the dotted line, and pressed my thumb against the panel. I put the PADD down and the colonel smiles at me. "I thought so."

* * *

I return to Priyat older and a little wiser than when I left and visit with my parents for about three weeks while I'm waiting for the orientation session at Starfleet Academy. I find out Tiho left town for good two years after I did. Last I heard he'd joined the priesthood and was sent offworld to New Bajor.

Mother fusses over me and tries to get me to have the veterans' hospital remove the scars from where I was stabbed by that greenskin two years ago. I brush her off. They're a vivid reminder that I'm not invincible, something I still forget every once in a while.

That's the reason I give her, anyway. It's not the whole story. I may have popped my cherry in the back of an armored vehicle, but I didn't lose my innocence then. That's what the scars mark: The first time I killed, and the first time I nearly died. The first time I looked Death in the eye. The first time he blinked.

Someday he won't.

Finally I say goodbye to my family for the second time. This time I won't be anywhere near my homeworld for nearly four years. Starfleet pays my passage on a _Gallant_-class passenger liner headed to Sol, but I take some of my savings and splurge on an upgrade to business class. Definitely worth it: I get a private room instead of having to bunk with somebody. Transwarp still isn't available to nonmilitary vessels so it's a long trip. I have to make a connection at Trill and finally arrive in Earth orbit after almost a month of travel.

**END OF PART ONE**

* * *

**Author's Notes:** I'm not sure how much of this Eleya actually relayed to Jake Sisko and how much is just Eleya's internal recollections. Although she probably didn't tell him the part about having her first time in the back of an armored vehicle. :P As for where I got the idea for that? _NCIS_' Ziva David. Bajorans are basically post-Holocaust space Jews and Eleya's a badass action girl, so what the hey?

The Militia doesn't actually use literal Marine Corps lingo and ranks, of course. That was an artistic decision to draw a bit of a contrast with Starfleet. Call it Translation Convention.

We don't get much of a look at how people outside the military travel planet-to-planet in the franchise. I envisioned sort of a cross between a jet airliner and a cruise ship for the _Gallant_-class (which I made up).


	2. From Bajor to the Black, Part II

**Part II**

What did I think when I reached Earth? I was just glad the trip was over, frankly. What? I'm Bajoran. You humans may think it's something special, but Earth to me is just another Class M rock like a thousand others. Only difference is I have to pay taxes to it, same as I would if the Federation was headquartered on Vulcan or Tellar.

* * *

I materialize on a transporter pad at Starfleet Academy. My luggage doesn't. Found out later it got beamed to Kabul by mistake. Typical.

A human cadet waiting at the transporter pad looks me up and down. Blond, dark brown eyes. "Um, Cadet Kanril Eleya?"

I guess he's confused by my gray-and-green Militia technician uniform. I nod at him. He's a nice looking guy, looks about my age. His collar has third-year pins on it and the divisional colors say science track. He's still staring. "What, do I have something on my face?"

He jerks a bit. "Um, no. Sorry, I was told to come get you and take you to Captain Ben-David's office. I wasn't expecting … What uniform is that?"

"Bajoran Militia. I'm an inter-service transfer. I was an NCO, naval gunnery specialist."

"NCO?"

"Uh, 'non-commissioned officer'? I was a sergeant."

"Oh!" I see the light panel turn on in his mind. "You mean a noncom."

"'Noncom', got it."

"Well. Um, follow me, Sergeant Eleya."

He starts away and I shoulder my kitbag and follow him. "By the way, Eleya's my given name, not my surname."

"Sorry. I'm Jerrod Dalton, Astrophysics major."

"Nice to meet you."

After meeting with Captain Peter Ben-David to get my classes and uniforms sorted out, and making a trip to the Academy hospital for a round of immunotherapy against Earth pollen and so forth, I get settled in and start familiarizing myself with the campus. They've got me in an old-style two-person dorm room roughly the same size as the _Kira_'s bridge. My roommate's a second-year, a human woman with black hair, brown skin, and almond-shaped eyes. She's Jasmine Velasquez, a warp core major who tells me to call her Jazz. Apparently her family's been in uniform since the Revolutionary War, whatever that is.

Starfleet has a much looser uniform code than the Militia so the first thing I do is start growing my hair back out. I still can't grow it as long as I had it as a teenager but eventually I'll have a ponytail again.

Officer training's mostly like I expected: a lot less physical, a lot more mental. I'm in classes six hours a day—everything from weapons engineering, my major, to conversational Rihan—and I hit the gym afterward to keep in shape. I start learning a new art. The humans call it krav maga and Starfleet made it part of the Command Conditioning regimen almost two centuries ago. It's not very different from the Cardassian-influenced military boxing I learned in basic, so I catch on fast.

About once a week, usually Friday night, I end up booted out of the dorm room. Jazz keeps bringing people back, boys and girls both, about half of them not cadets and rarely the same ones twice, and nonhumans more often than not. I'm not averse to the odd hookup myself—Hell, I vividly remember waking up with a hangover next to two passed-out Klingons with a cracked rib and several bruises in embarrassing places—but she puts me to shame. Normally I go to the library but three months in I hit up an off-campus club for a drink because this time Jazz brought back a girl _and_ a guy. I file into the melee and try not to think about it. The music's loud enough that last part isn't too hard.

After a few dances with people I don't know from Tor Jolan, I go up to the bar and order a Hathon hammer. I'm a little surprised the bartender even knows what one is, never mind having the ingredients. Somebody comes up beside me and flags down the bartender. "Scotch and soda for five!"

It's Dalton's voice. I turn. Dalton's face, too. "Hey there," I say.

He turns to me in surprise and smiles. "Well! If it isn't Sergeant Kanril!"

I laugh. "That's _Cadet_ Kanril to you, _dospek_."

He grins. I never noticed it before but he's got nice teeth. "You here with someone?"

I shake my head. "Roommate kicked me out for the night."

"Boy or girl?"

"Yes."

He looks confused for a moment, then his eyes widen. "You mean to say—" I nod to confirm and take a sip of my drink. He turns his head away and whistles through his teeth, then turns back to me as the barman, who I think is Napean but I never actually found out for certain, comes back with several glasses on a tray. "Listen, I'm here with some friends—"

"Well, then I won't keep you."

"I was _about_ to ask you to join us, Kanril."

"I wouldn't want to impose…" I trail off as he gets an insistent look in his eye. "Oh, what the _phekk_. Lead on, MacDuff." I scoop up my glass and start to tell the barman to open a tab before I remember that Earth doesn't use money. Humans, what can I say? They're weird.

His friends are a Vulcan named T'Shae with boyishly short black hair and pale skin who's flat as console surface, a striped Bolian named Roro Brosh, a blue-and-purple Saurian named Sherik Akas who claims to be distantly related to the President, and an aristocratic-looking blonde Romulan named Arahael t'Rannoch. "Everyone, this is Kanril Eleya."

Chorus of hellos. "Hi there," I reply.

"What's that you're drinking?" t'Rannoch asks.

I raise the glass. "Hathon hammer, cocktail somebody on my homeworld came up with. Start with bloodwine, then add two shots of kava juice and one of kanar, then you shake the whole thing over ice."

"Kanar?" Dalton looks confused.

"Cardassian liquor, something like forty proof on average."

We chat for a while about drinking and classes and holodramas, the usual kinds of things, and eventually leave the club and go to a burger joint down the street that's been operating under the same family since the 1970s. I let Dalton order for me. The burger he picks has something called 'avocado' on it. The taste is hard to describe; Bajor doesn't have anything even close as far as I know.

The others say good night at about half past eleven. Dalton and I don't. Somehow I end up back at his room. His roommate's out for the weekend visiting family someplace called Johannesburg. I ask Dalton why he isn't. "Call me Jerrod," he tells me, cracking a bottle of wine. "And in answer to your question, I'm from Aldebaran."

"And that means?"

"It means I'm closer to home than you are, Kanril, but I still need a seat on a starliner."

"Call me Eleya. Cheers," and we clink glasses and drink. The wine's from the Napa Valley further north. Not all that different from Bajoran springwine, maybe a little more alcoholic.

I don't remember afterward who started what or when; I'm just glad I remembered to get my contraceptive implant renewed the day before. I'm sober enough to ask him between kisses if he's with either of the women we had dinner with. He pulls back long enough to answer, "T'Shae and Arahael are with each other, Roro's married, and Sherik isn't interested in mammals."

"Oh. That's good." Then we're pulling at each other's clothing, then we're nude on the floor—what happened to the couch? Hell if I know—and I'm screaming aloud as he takes me, kissing and nibbling at the ridges on my nose.

I don't know how many times we made love that first night—I wasn't exactly in a condition to count—but the light of dawn finds us tangled in a mess of sheets in his bed. He's still asleep. I stroke his hair for a moment, then walk to the window, my front wrapped in a sheet, and watch the sun start to rise over the dark azure waters of San Francisco Bay, glittering off the water.

I hear him shift in the bed behind me. "Morning," he says.

"You've got a great view," I tell him.

"Yes, I do," he murmurs. I turn and catch him eyeing my ass. I snicker and look back at the bay. I feel more than hear him come up behind me and he kisses my neck. I start to laugh but it turns into a sigh as he turns to nibbling my shoulder. The sheet falls away and I allow him to lead me back to the bed.

That's that. After that night Jerrod and I are inseparable. We study together, we spar together in the gym—I win most of the time; unlike him I've had practical experience—we meet up almost every night, with or without our friends, and we spend most of our weekends together in varying stages of undress. Three weeks in he tells me he loves me; I decide I agree soon after. End of the semester we apply for a coed room. Four months after that I start telling him about my people's betrothal rituals, and I'm only half-joking.

Then one morning, just over a year after we met in Club Berliner, I wake up and Jerrod's nowhere to be found. No note, no audio message on the console. He left in the night, didn't even make me breakfast. I go to Admiral Bartila and learn the son of a _kosst amojan_ was offered early graduation and shipped out with the USS _Planck_ for a two-year survey mission in the Gamma Quadrant. The only response I ever get from him is, "Sorry. Had to do this. Be well."

They say love and hatred are two sides of the same coin. I can vouch. I cry myself to sleep every night for over a week. Commander Thrass flat-out orders me to go see a counselor because my grades are suffering. After a couple sessions with a Perikian Bajoran shrink named Toris Lem I learn how to sleep alone again and I get myself back on track. I satisfy my needs with friends like Jazz and t'Rannoch and the odd hookup.

I don't have the inclination or time for anything else. The classes get harder the closer I get to the end of OCS. On Thrass's recommendation I add some command school classes my third and final semester. They're the hardest of all, but the challenge is exciting. I never really thought about wearing the red and white of a combat CO until a week into that semester.

Graduation for the Class of 2403. Starfleet flies my parents all the way to Earth for the occasion. It's good having connections. My new dress whites are a lot more comfortable than my old Militia dress uniform was, but you know how it is: they make them to look impressive, not for comfort. I'm in the top three percent of my class. I lost too much ground after Dalton left to have a shot at valedictorian and I racked up too many demerits for leaving my quarters a mess anyway, but I've still got ribbons for academic and athletic performance, and my Silver Cross is unique in the class. I see my father standing in the third row, beaming, when Admiral Daisuke Hussein pins a Starfleet ensign's single brass pip to my chest.

* * *

Yes, I still hate him with a passion, even today. I was ready to spend the rest of my life with him and the bastard left without a goodbye or a reason. Took me almost three years to be able to have a steady relationship again, and my next boyfriend still didn't last four months before we split up. Jerrod Dalton hurt me worse than that Orion did, and I still wake up every once in a while from nightmares about her.

Anyway, for the next three years or so I had a pretty typical career path. They put me on one of the big _Regent_-class cruisers, USS _Betazed_, as a section head in forward gunnery. After the first couple of days the rank-and-file crewmen decided they liked having a former noncom for a boss. We were posted to the border with the remnants of the Romulan Empire to keep an eye on things and provide humanitarian aid on request while Taris and Sela had their dustup. Rumors were already flying about the Tal'Shiar getting out of control, and we even heard there was a would-be splinter state calling itself the _Kreh'dhhokh Rihan_ forming from refugees, disaffected RSN crews, and remnants of the few Ship-Clans that survived the supernova, almost a hundred light-years rimward of where we were in Zeta Andromedae. We didn't give much credence to that last one at the time, more fools us.

The aid? Off the record? Well, _obviously_ the Federation had an ulterior motive. No, don't get me wrong, we're absolutely supposed to help people regardless of present or future allegiance, because we're the good guys and it's the right thing to do. Besides, Nova Roma wasn't exactly doing itself any favors by blockading planets with curable epidemics, and a lot of the fringeworlds were having to deal with long-term refugee populations with resources the central government didn't even have. We _could_ feed them, and we _did_, with or without the consent of the Senate. But if we could sneak a few outlying planets away from the Empire by doing it, why not?

By the time my second tour on the _Betazed_ was up the Council had declared war on the Klingons over the crap J'mpok was trying to pull in the Hromi Cluster, and I notified Command that I wanted a front-line post. Didn't work out. They came up short on officers who spoke Bajoran and Cardassian and they wanted somebody with Militia experience to liaise on Deep Space 9—apparently their last assistant liaison officer got into it with a vedek and was, uh, politely asked not to come back—so instead I got sent home to B'hava'el for six months. Boring, predictable assignment for the most part, mostly paperwork. I did get assigned to deal with a Dominion delegation once, though, which was interesting. Turns out Jem'Hadar hit pretty hard but, protip, their joints are just as vulnerable as yours or mine.

No, of course not! The Vorta's bodyguards just got antsy and needed to blow off some steam, so in the interest of diplomacy some of us agreed to spar with them in the gym. I needed the exercise anyway.

I probably would've eventually gotten a command by the usual route but, you know that old Klingon saying. We aren't born great, we have greatness thrust upon us. I don't always like that I had it handed to me early rather than feeling like I really earned it, but enjoyment isn't a job requirement. After six months on DS9 my prior request for a front-line combat post finally percolated through the bureaucracy, I guess. By now I'd been a JG from time-in-grade for over a year, and they stuck me on this _Shi'Kahr_-class light cruiser, the _Kagoshima_, as second shift weapons officer. "_Baby_ _K_", we called the ship, in reference to the much bigger _Noble_-class USS _Khitomer_ in the same squadron. Captain Alfred Detweiler was a very nice man in my opinion. He kept encouraging me to keep taking command classes over subspace, no matter what he was doing he always had time to lend an ear, and he had a husband and three teenage children on New Leipzig whom he loved to bits.

Explaining to them why I was suddenly commanding his ship was without a doubt the single hardest thing I've ever had to do.

* * *

I materialize back on the transporter pad of the _Kagoshima_ as the ship shakes under another hit. The corridors echo with weapons fire. _Sher hahr kosst_, they've boarded us.

My combadge crackles. "This is Security Officer Terel Khas! We need help now!"

"JG Kanril here, I'm on my way!" I palm the access panel for a weapon and toss a rifle and Type 2 to the transporter chief.

"Lieutenant, I am a transporter operator, not a soldier," the dark-skinned Vulcan answers.

"Petty T'Shar, I rather doubt the boltheads are going to care one way or the other! Grab a gun and come with me if you want to live."

The _Kagoshima_ was part of a fleet massing for an assault on a number of KDF positions in nearby systems. Intelligence had just reported that we'd already lost the element of surprise—they caught a surgically altered Orion in Crypto at Starbase 138-when the Prophets decided it would be fun to throw the cosmic equivalent of a bad joke at us. Instead of the Klinks, transwarp apertures opened right on top of us and a superior number of Borg ships emerged and opened fire. First time anyone had seen them since the late Seventies. Wouldn't be the last.

I hit my combadge as I head into the corridor, following the sound of shooting. "Khas, it's Eleya! Where's Captain Detweiler?"

"Dead!"

"Commander zh'Thirial?"

"Dead! Everybody who was on the bridge is dead! Sir, look out!" I hear a muffled thud over the comms and then a scream, distorted by loudness. The shooting ahead of us ceases abruptly.

By now four or five other redshirts, a mix of security and tactical crew, faces I know, have joined me and T'Shar. I turn the corner for a moment then duck back behind cover. I saw well enough to tell that ten or so Borg drones are doing their unstoppable zombie horde thing. Looks like something out of a bad Earth holodrama. I hand-signal two of the others to sneak to the far corner and lean out again, rifle leveled. Now I spot Khas, a Bajoran noncom from Semmel Province, leaning against the wall, twitching and moaning, with gray spreading from a wound in his neck. I spit, shift my aim, and crack off a shot into his head to put him out of his misery.

One drone, used to be a Talaxian, I think, sees me and moves forward. I fire a half-dozen times but the shots shatter on its force field. They've already adapted. _Phekk_, now it's too close! It raises its arm but I swing the barrel of my rifle and parry the assimilation tubules into the bulkhead. The drone robotically utters, "Resistance is futile."

"Oh, shut the _phekk_ up!" Before it can try again with the other arm I slam the rifle straight forward into its mouth, feeling the static crackle as it passes through the force field, and just hold the trigger down. The drone's head explodes backwards and bits of it bounce off the one behind it; the trunk drops like a stone. The other drones spin to face me. "Oh, _phekk_. T'Shar, give me your pistol! The rest of you, fall back!"

"Sir!"

I set the phaser to overload, holler "Fire in the hole!" and toss it underhand into the midst of the drones, then I turn and jump back through the doorway. "Computer, emergency seal blast door!" The phaser begins to emit a high-pitched whine and the doors slam shut as soon as I'm clear. Then there's a muffled thunderclap and a staccato series of ringing noises as shrapnel skitters off the dense alloy. "Adapt to _that_, you son of a whore. Computer, scan for Borg life signs."

Chirp. "There are no Borg life signs remaining on the ship."

"Contact the bridge."

Chirp. "Error. The bridge suffered a direct hit from a Borg cutting laser four-point-two minutes ago. There are no survivors detected."

Over my swearing T'Shar says, "Computer, identify seniormost active officer."

Another chirp. "Lieutenant Junior Grade Kanril Eleya, Shift 2 Weapons Officer."

"Sonuvabitch," Crewman Vibol says behind me.

He's right. Last I looked I was pretty damn far down in the line of succession. "Computer, hail the _Khitomer_ and patch it through to my combadge, and direct us to Main Engineering, safest route."

A deep voice responds through my combadge. "Captain Yim here. Go, _Kagoshima_."

"Sir, this is, uh, Acting Captain Kanril."

Silence for a moment, then, "What the fuck?"

"My thoughts exactly, sir."

"All right, I've got you on scan. The bridge is completely gone—"

"Figured that out already, sir. I'm going to try to take command of the ship from Main Engineering."

"Okay, near as I can tell, your engines and most of your weapons arrays are still intact but your primary shields are pretty torn up. I'm going to send over some help. The Borg are moving off for now, headed for the planet. If they come back we'll cover you."

"Negative, sir, you're worse off than we are. They come back before we're underway, forget the recovery op. We'll set the self-destruct, then you beam us off and get the _phekk_ out of here."

There's a silence for a moment, then Yim answers, "Understood. I've locked onto your combadge and we're beaming a work crew directly to your location." There's a transporter whine near me and a buxom Andorian JG with boyishly short hair, wearing tactical red, materializes with six engineers of various grades. She introduces herself as "Tess Phohl, torpedo officer."

"Kanril Eleya, acting CO," I respond. "Main Engineering's this way. Computer, direct the rest of the work crew, fastest safe route to forward shields."

We get to a turbolift and head down two decks to the engine room. A mutton-chopped Andorian _chaan_ meets me. "Bynam! Where the _phekk_ is Lieutenant Hayes?"

Ensign Ehrob flicks a thumb at a human lying on a stretcher, covered in burns and moaning as a corpsman fiddles with a hypospray. Looks like an EPS conduit explosion. "He's still breathing but he's no good to us like this. I'm acting CHENG for now."

"Seems to be a pattern. All right, I need to set up a temporary bridge here."

"Right away. Kuznetzova!"

It's the solid work of ten minutes to get shields back and full control of the ship shifted to consoles across the front of the section and in the break room on the second level. As we work I quickly quiz Phohl on her background. "Born in the Adris Islands near Andoria's equator, majored in military history with a naval weaps minor, assigned to the _Khitomer_ after graduation."

"Why'd you join up?"

"To piss off my _thavan_," she answers with a grin.

I drop the ODN coupler on my foot. "Ow. Your what?"

"Her _thaan_ father," Bynam translates.

"His family's been Imperial Guard for centuries. I decided to be contrary."

I slam an access panel closed and take a seat at a workstation rigged up on the break room table. "_Kagoshima_ to _Khitomer_! We're online!"

"Yim here, and not a moment too soon, Kanril! Reading two Borg probes headed this way, ETA two minutes!"

I grit my teeth. I've never fought the Borg before today but I know that even the probes are supposedly a match for an _Intrepid_-class cruiser. "Bynam, set shields, phasers and torpedoes into random remodulation. New frequency every shot."

"By the book, then?"

"It's the book for a reason," Phohl returns. "Sir, we've only got thirty torpedoes left."

"I'm not a 'sir', Phohl. I'm a former NCO, I work for a living. 'Captain' is fine, 'ma'am' if you want to be formal, Hell, call me by my first name, even. Range to target, sixty thousand kilometers. Who's on conn?"

"Uh, I am, ma'am," brown-furred Caitian ensign in ops gold responds. I gesture questioningly at his jacket. "'Operation Return' is my favorite holodeck scenario."

I rest my face in my palm. "Fine, we don't have time to be picky. Ahead full."

"Yim to Kanril, we've got a malfunction in targeting!"

His ship must be worse off than I thought. "Slave your fire control to ours. You can handle the targeting, Phohl?"

"With pleasure, ma'am," she says, giving a toothy grin. Now I'm certain I'm misreading her face—she looks eager, _hungry_ even.

I think back to my Academy lessons and start last-minute planning. "All right, remember, people, it's time on target that counts with the Borg. They're tough but attrition hurts them as much as us. Ensign M'shass, put them on our starboard and keep us moving, fast. Try to use the lead probe as cover against the trailer. Phohl, scan for load-bearing points, pick a spot, and keep pounding it for as long as you can reach it. Let's do this!"

"Aye, ma'am!" they confirm in unison.

We close with the Borg at high speed, the _Khitomer_ below and behind us. "Entering optimum firing range," Phohl says.

"Fire at will."

"I have a lock. Firing!" Spears of coherent radiation limned in all colors of the rainbow erupt from our forward arrays and slam into the lead probe's shields. The _Khitomer_ adds her fire to ours seconds later. "M'shass, keep us on this arc! It's working!"

"Aye, sir!" We close, continuing to fire again and again. Suddenly I feel a jolt and we begin to slow. "They've got us in a tractor beam!"

A stream of plasma slams into our shields. "Starboard shields at ninety percent!" Phohl barks.

"Conn, hard to starboard!" I order. "Fly us right up the beam!"

"_Whaaat?_"

"Just do it! Bynam, prepare to adjust shield phase and frequency, one-eight-zero from the probe!"

"Captain, you're not gonna… Yes, ma'am! Ready!"

The _Kagoshima_ shivers around us as the engines fight the tractor beam and the ship begins to turn into the oncoming ship. "Engines to maximum!" I shout at M'shass. "Phohl, divert power to forward shields!"

Now instead of _fighting_ the beam, we're working _with_ the pulling force, taking us towards the probe even faster than before. "We're gonna hit them!" M'shass yells.

"No, set the computer to switch to full reverse after we pass through their shields!"

"'Pass through'?!"

"Trust me! Phohl, get a lock on the tractor beam emitter!" Three, two, one, "Bynam, now!"

"Adjusting shields!"

The two barriers, phased at 180 degrees from each other, collide, merge, and vanish. The computer arrests our forward momentum and Phohl hammers her key, sending a single lance of nadions slamming into the probe's unprotected hull and blowing a crater the size of our saucer into the tritanium alloy. The tractor beam vanishes in an instant. "Phohl, activate transporter! One photon torpedo, armed for ten-second timer!"

"Beaming torpedo!"

"M'shass, full impulse! Get us out of here!"

Explosive weapons, whether chemical, nuclear, or matter/antimatter, derive most of their damaging force from the shockwaves produced when they blow in atmosphere. In the vacuum of space they're left mostly with thermal radiation, reducing their potency. They also tend to waste at least half the energy released, since it radiates away from the target. But when a weapon goes off _inside_ a ship, it's going off in atmosphere, and with no wasted energy. There's a blinding white flash behind us as the 64 megaton matter/antimatter warhead blows, ripping the probe apart from the inside in a fraction of a second.

"Lieutenant Kanril, are you _insane_?!" Yim's voice.

"It worked, didn't it?" I shoot back. On the plot the other probe, unable to slow in time, slams into the debris field left by its compatriot, ripping huge gaps into its shields and hull. "Phohl, Yim, hit them now!"

"Roger, fire in the hole!" he shouts as the Andorian barks, "Firing!" A volley of quantum torpedoes from the _Khitomer_ and more photons from us crash into the listing probe's bow and flank and the ensuing blasts tear it to fragments.

"See? They're not so tough!" somebody says behind me.

"Don't get overconfident, Martinez," Bynam warns.

"Actually, she's got a point," I comment. "The Borg trade on the fact that everyone's scared to death of them. Apart from that the only advantage they have is numbers and the fact they can adapt to frequency-based weapons."

"So, you're not scared either?" he asks in a questioning tone.

I look over to him and tell him absolutely seriously, "Trust me, I'm terrified. But when I was in basic Gunny Elwar used to tell us, 'Soldier goes into combat and he ain't scared, he's either dead or stupid.' Fear the enemy all you want, just don't let it stop you from doing your job. Phohl, Yim, I need a new target."

Captain Yim's voice comes through, "Not just yet. Let's see if we can't find a few ships that are still in one piece. Strength in numbers, right?"

"Sensors!" I bark. "Who's on sensors?" A dark-skinned petty officer three raises a hand. "Any friendlies?"

"I've got a warp core signature, just arrived. _Olympic_-class, transponder says it's the _Seacole_."

"Hail them."

The _Seacole_ is a hospital ship that we were supposed to escort to the facility on Relva VII after retaking it from the Klingons, but that's obviously not happening, and so we spend the next hour rescuing survivors from several disabled ships and ferrying the wounded to the doctors. Another party of probes interrupts us but they've already taken heavy damage and prove no match. We move on to the planet itself, gathering surviving colonists by transporter before the _Khitomer_ demolishes the entire site with a torpedo bombardment. By now additional reinforcements, a couple of damaged but warp-worthy _Excalibur_-class cruisers and a _Dervish_-class escort, have dribbled in and we begin burning hard for deep space.

"Captain, I've got a transwarp aperture opening ahead of us. Oh, _Scheiße_!"

I don't speak that language but I get the gist, especially now that there's a damn cube on the sensors. It's blocking our way out. "Screw it, we'll go _through_ them. We've got enough ships now. All ships, this is the _Kagoshima_. Slave your targeting to ours and hit them like you mean it!"

"Sorry, this is Commander Rainier of the USS _Ulfberht_. Who the hell are you?"

Yim's voice answers, "She's Brevet Lieutenant Commander Kanril Eleya, and I'm Captain Jay Yim, acting FOIC. Slave your targeting to the _Kagoshima_, _Commander_."

There's a pause, then a reluctant-sounding "Aye sir!"

I try not to think about Captain Yim giving me a field promotion. "M'shass, full impulse."

As we close the speakers fill with an echoing voice, as if billions of voices were speaking as one. "We are the Borg. Surrender your vessel. You will escort us to your homeworld—"

"I'm getting really sick of hearing that. Phohl, shut them up for me."

"Weapons locked! Firing!" Dozens of streams of glowing particles erupt from our forward phaser banks and the rest of the fleet adds their fire. The cube's shields spark and glitter under the barrage but hold.

M'shass banks hard to port as a tractor beam erupts from the towering side of the Borg ship, but it wasn't aimed at us. The _Mosul_, fifteen kilometers behind us, is ensnared and her shields start to collapse. A cutting beam spits out of the side of the probe and slices into the starboard nacelle but the _Szczerbiec_ cuts across the beam and interrupts it with its own shields. We continue firing on that same spot as the _Khitomer_ comes in high and opens up with a full broadside. One shot penetrates on frequency and the emitters for the tractor beam vanish in a fireball; the _Mosul_ quickly breaks off.

A beam of confined plasma slams into our forward shields as we come around for another pass. The entire ship jolts and I hear an explosion behind me and somebody screams. "Damage report!" I bark.

"Forward shields at 45 percent!" an ops noncom responds. "Power loss to Phaser Two! Casualties in Exobiology!"

Phohl shouts, "Damage control to Phaser Two!" as I ask Bynam about the explosion.

"EPS conduit blew on the catwalk! I've got a man down!"

"Status of the cube!"

The ship thrums with power as Phohl opens up with the remaining forward phasers. "Nearing shield collapse on this facing!" There's a pause. "Aspect change in target! They're trying to roll ship!"

"Kanril to all units! Tractor that thing!" Six pale blue beams of projected gravitons snap out from the fleet and grip the cube, as even the _Seacole_ has joined the fight now. The Borg vessel is too strong to stop the turn completely so instead we're dragged along as it turns, which was more the point anyway. Either way, we're keeping our fire focused on the same section of shields.

_Baby K_ shakes again. "Port shields at 20 percent! Wait, Captain, it worked! Enemy shield failure!"

"Arm torpedoes and fire everything we've got! Take 'em out!"

"With pleasure!" She slams her fist down on the firing key. The forward launcher goes into rapid fire and half a hundred torpedoes in red and blue from all over the fleet hammer into the side. Huge cracks as wide as a runabout rocket across the cube's flanks faster than the eye can follow. "She's gonna blow!"

"Conn, get us outta here!" I order. As we flee, the cube writhes in its death throes, clouds of green plasma beginning to spew out of the cracks, but even a mortally wounded beast can still bite. Remaining tractor emplacements ensnare the _Mosul_ and the _Ulfberht_ and another cutting beam slams out and rakes across the upper hull of the former. A secondary explosion erupts, then another, and in seconds the fan-shaped patrol escort is shuddering under a rapid series of blasts.

"This is Commander Dalmek! We're abandoning ship! GHAA—" and the rest is static. Escape pods begin to boil off the _Mosul_'s flanks, ants fleeing a doomed anthill, as it continues to shake under the continued chain reaction of explosions, and the lights go out one by one as the vacuum of space consumes the flames. The cutting beam, now flickering, snaps out again and rips into the after section of the ship, and a much larger explosion from the remaining torpedoes lays the stern open like a profane flower.

"Prophets… T'Shar, drop facing shields and lock onto life signs! Anyone we can bring aboard, get 'em!"

The petty at sensors yells, "Captain, I'm picking up an imminent core breach in the cube! We don't have time!"

"You're relieved!" Phohl snarls at him.

"Initiating transport," T'Shar announces with typical Vulcan dispassion, like she's telling us she's going down to the store. I don't get Vulcans, I never have.

Abruptly the screens showing our rear view go staticky as the cube's drives finally blow. The radiation pulse washes over our shields a fraction of a second later and the _Kagoshima_ judders as thousands of tons of vaporized and fragmented metal and composite bounce across our hull. The lights change from white to red, indicating we're on emergency power.

"Transport completed, Captain. Thirty-four members of the USS _Mosul_ crew are now aboard. Dispatching remaining medical teams to Cargo Bay One."

That ship carried a crew of two hundred.

* * *

The _Ulfberht_ brought us under tow for the next couple of days while the battered remnants of the fleet traveled to the nearest Federation transwarp conduit. Day three we managed to get main power back and went the rest of the way ourselves. _Baby_ _K_ spent two weeks in the yard, during which they put me through the "Kobayashi Maru" and made me the permanent captain. We gathered a new crew and went right back out there. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, you know?

Vega proved one of the worst defeats in Federation history. Starfleet lost twenty ships and over five thousand people, and of the 2.8 million civilians on Vega IX we got maybe nine thousand out. And we never found out what the _phekk_ the Borg even wanted, besides the obvious, I mean. But in the long run it may have been a lucky break. I know it sounds horrible of me to say that, but the boltheads' reappearance got the diplomats on both sides to start talking again. That gave _us_ a reason to hope this stupid, pointless war might be over soon.

Just the latest in a long string of times our two sides have fought stupid, pointless wars over idiotic disagreements with a complete and utter lack of any conclusive result. Hell with it all.

Do I wish things had gone differently in my own career? No, not really. I mean, if I'd taken the usual, longer road to command, sure, I'd probably get a bit more respect, but frankly I don't really care what people outside my chain of command think of me. I care what _my_ crew thinks, I care what my superiors think, and I care what the Prophets think. And I'm happy where I am. I've got good people working with me and I feel like I matter. I'll probably never make admiral, but to be perfectly frank that's not what people who join Starfleet ever really want. Sure, we've got to have admirals planning things out, but in my experience nobody dreams of being a flag officer when they sign on the dotted line and take the Oath of Service.

They dream of being in that chair, on that bridge, making a difference in whatever small way they can.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** Jerrod Dalton was a major character in the Foundry spotlight "The Interwarp Experiment". You had the choice to make him either an Academy rival (think Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy) or an old flame with whom you had a passionate love affair. This is the latter, though I made a couple alterations to how he and Eleya met.

The USS _Ulfberht_ is named for the Norse Ulfberht swords. I dunno, I just decided to give the first several _Excalibur_-class ships sword- or knight-related names in my head-canon (an idea I got from a fanon page on Memory Gamma). Likewise the _Szczerbiec_ is named for the coronation sword of the kings of Poland.

I borrowed the term "_Kreh'dhhokh Rihan_" from protogoth's Romulan history text "Ahr'fvahir mnean?" on her fleet's website. It refers to the Romulan Republic before it became a recognized government.


	3. The Universe Doesn't Cheat

**The Universe Doesn't Cheat**

_… Never give up, never slow down  
Never grow old, never ever die young  
_- "Never Die Young", James Taylor

_0952 hours Pacific Standard Time, Saturday, January 27, 2407, ten days after the Borg attack on Vega Colony…_

The various military services of known space differ in as many ways as there are stars in the sky. The Ferengi organize the Alliance Defense Fleet around patrolling their commerce lanes, and their ships are optimized both to carry cargo and to fight pirates and mercs. The Klingon Great Houses are feudal lordships, fighting internecine battles with each other about as often as they combine under the banner of the Imperial Klingon Defense Forces to fight the wars of the Empire as a whole. The _riovir_ of the fallen Romulan Star Navy frequently acted as politicians and military governors. The Federation Starfleet styles itself an exploration and diplomatic service first and a navy second. And as always, nobody has any fragging clue what the Breen are doing.

But if there's one thing that they all have in common, it's the importance of traditions. In Starfleet, the CO of a starship is always addressed as "captain". The Federation flagship is always a member of the newest, most advanced class in service at time of commissioning, and is always named USS _Enterprise_ with the registry number NCC-1701. And before formally being granted the right to command a starship, a Starfleet officer has to take a command simulation called the "Kobayashi Maru."

And because of tradition, despite holodecks having been a thing since the late 23rd century, the "Maru" is still conducted on a physical simulated bridge, located in the Richard Barnett Building on the Starfleet Academy campus in San Francisco, California. Which is where Captain Haelivthras th'Shvrashli, "Thrass" to his friends, is headed. The Andorian, who is on his second two-year tour as an Academy instructor, had been assigned yesterday as one of the monitors for an off-season session of the test, and is going to the pre-test meeting in the faculty room on the third floor. "Morning, people," he greets everyone as he walks into the room and makes for the coffeepot. "So, who's today's victim? Coffee, anyone?"

Commander Steven Hackett strokes his beard as he brings it up on his PADD. "Kanril Eleya, and no, thank you, sir."

"Tell me about her," Rear Admiral Brenth Arkad asks. "And get me a refill, Thrass."

"Bajoran, age 27, brevet lieutenant commander, acting CO, USS _Kagoshima_. Enlisted in the Bajoran Militia out of high school, served four years, awarded Bajoran Silver Cross for Valor in '99. Starfleet OCS majoring in naval weapons, graduated '02. Two tours on the Romulan border as a gunnery officer on the _Betazed_, then six months as a Militia liaison on DS9."

"Ah," Thrass says, the description having jogged his memory. "I remember her from one of the classes I taught a few years ago. 'Scarface', we called her."

"I hope you didn't call her that to her face."

"Oh, absolutely not, Steve," Thrass agreed, chuckling as he pours a cup for Arkad. "One thing I've learned in my career, never piss off a Bajoran female. Long story; I won't get into that. How'd she end up captain? She only graduated three-and-a-half years ago."

"She was at Vega. Everybody senior to her was assimilated or blown up," Steve answers.

The Atrean admiral grimaces. "Rough." He stretches and takes the cup. "How is she as a person?"

"You want my opinion or just what's in her dossier, sir?"

"Speak your mind, Thrass."

"She's got potential. Now, she's got a temper, she's coarse—seriously, she swears a _lot_—and she's a straight shooter without a lot of subtlety. On the other hand, she's smart and she thinks on her feet, she doesn't take 'no' for an answer, and she's fiercely loyal to her friends. You know I've been an advocate of the accelerated OCS program since its inception? Kanril was my favorite student."

"What do you think she's going to do?" Steve asks.

"I have no idea," Thrass replies, grinning. "I will say, don't expect much in the way of technical wizardry. Her approach is generally, if it doesn't die the first time, hit it harder. Don't underestimate her, though, she'll surprise you."

"Think she'll pull a Kirk?" Arkad queries.

"No," Steve answers confidently. "I mean, her acting chief engineer, Ensign Ehrob, liked to play with code according to this file—he got a demerit for hacking another cadet's dorm console to play Catullan metal on an endless loop—but we've gone over all the computers with a fine-toothed comb like we have every run since Kirk. Plus, she wouldn't know she needed to: it's her first time taking the test. Per standard Form IV prep materials she knows she'll be commanding a _Constitution_-class on a rescue mission across the Klingon border and that's it."

"Wait, she didn't take the 'Maru' in school? Says here she took a number of command classes."

"But not enough that it was a requirement, sir," Captain Sivuk says, walking in. "Good morning, Steven, Captain th'Shvrashli, Admiral Arkad, Commander Haas."

"Hey, Sivuk," Steve greets him. "Test chamber all squared away?"

"Indeed. We are ready to proceed at 10:10, as scheduled." The stocky, graying Vulcan from the School of Engineering is twenty years into his second career, having spent the first fifty-five years of his adult life as a city planner in Shi'Kahr. He steps over to the replicator and orders a raspberry yogurt. "In answer to your question, Admiral, in this case the 'Kobayashi Maru' is a chiefly a formality to satisfy those who believe her too inexperienced for her first command. Admiral Quinn has made it clear that despite her youth, he feels she demonstrated command ability abundantly during the fighting at Vega Colony. He will make her the _Kagoshima_'s permanent CO unless she fails entirely."

"So the actual test result doesn't really matter?" Hackett asks.

"No, it matters," Commander Justine Haas replies, speaking for the first time. "She does well, she gets fast-tracked, makes captain in two years. And it shuts up the naysayers, causes her less trouble down the line. Besides, the test gives _us_ some fun, too. I've seen her type before: tough girl, brash, a little arrogant. She's a young Kirk with a crinkled nose. Let's face it: fucking with her will be fun," she finishes with an evil grin.

"Kirk? You really think so, Justine?"

Haas is about to answer the admiral when the intercom chirps. The computer's voice says, "The time is ten hundred hours. The time is ten hundred hours and ten seconds."

"Time to go, people," Arkad says. He knocks back the last of his coffee and leads the way out of the room.

* * *

Thrass enters the monitoring room and whistles upon seeing another Andorian, much younger, in the tactical officer's seat in the bridge simulator. "So who's the _shen_ with the great rack?"

"Captain!" Steve says in a half-scolding, half-surprised tone.

"Hey, I'm bonded, not dead. Look, but don't touch, eh?"

Sivuk ignores the repartee. "That is Lieutenant Tesjha Phohl, full name Siritesjha sh'Phohlhi, goes by Tess. She was a torpedo officer on the _Khitomer_ but Captain Yim sent her to help Kanril operate the _Kagoshima_ as acting tactical officer."

"All right, who else is in there?" Arkad queries.

Steve checks his PADD again. "Lieutenant Birail Riyannis, a laboratory officer from Biology, assigned to play Kanril's science officer, and Lieutenant T'Var, ops, who was here on layover between assignments. Kanril requested her; apparently they met in the gym and hit it off. Ah, speak of the devil, here's the main attraction."

A tall, slim, athletic-looking Bajoran with flaming red hair, wearing a red-and-white Sierra-style CO's jacket, strolls onto the bridge from the side door of the simulator. "I see why you called her Scarface," Arkad comments. "What happened?"

"Old knife wound," Thrass answers. "Poison interfered with the dermal regenerator and it scarred, and I guess she decided to keep it as a reminder or something." He reaches for the intercom. "Good morning, Commander Kanril."

* * *

I turn at the sound of a familiar voice. "Professor Thrass? Is that you?"

"Yup, I pulled proctor for this round. You doing okay? Heard you had a rough time at Vega."

"No worse than anyone else, sir. Psych said I'm clean."

"Glad to hear it, Commander," comes an unfamiliar soprano with an odd accent. She sounds mostly British but there's a touch of another accent I can't place. I'm not familiar with all of Earth's languages. "I'm Commander Justine Haas from the War College. Also with us today are Captain Sivuk from Electrical Engineering, Commander Steven Hackett from Astrophysics, and Rear Admiral Brenth Arkad is our rep from the Academy Board. And you've met Thrass already, of course."

"Are you ready to begin, Commander?" Male voice, cool, carefully measured, got to be the Vulcan, Sivuk.

"Give me two minutes, sir." I hit the mute button on the console to confer with the team. "Remember the emergency plan?"

"I still consider it too complicated," T'Var answers.

"It'll work."

"Commander—"

"_It'll work_," I interrupt more emphatically. "Tess? Riyannis?"

"I told you to call me Biri," the Trill corrects me. "And yes, I'm ready."

"I'm ready, too, ma'am," Tess confirms.

I slap my combadge. "Bynam, you ready?"

"Ready as I'll ever be." He's in the simulated engineering section one floor down.

I unmute the simulator. "Ready to roll, sirs."

Thrass's voice again. "Test begins in five, four, three, two, one, _mark_!"

"Captain," Tess says, "we've picked up a distress signal from the USS _Kobayashi Maru_. They've hit a mine near the border and their engines are out. Starbase 227 has ordered us to rescue them."

"Tess, sound battle stations. Conn, set course for their coordinates but bring us out of warp half a light-second from their location. And get me the full specs on the _Maru_."

"Course locked in."

"Warp seven, engage."

We're thirty minutes away and I look over the data on the _Maru_. _Ptolemy_-class transport ship carrying a starliner pod. 257 passengers, 150 crew. If we have to leave the ship behind it'll be a tight fit getting them all aboard the USS _Constitution_. "Tess, have anyone in the saucer cargo bays clear out, now. We're going to need the space."

She nods and presses the intercom. "Any personnel in saucer cargo bays, please evacuate now."

"Once everyone's out, I want everything transferred into the other cargo bays, prioritized as you please. Anything we can't fit, toss."

* * *

"Okay, so she's doing contingency planning," Hackett comments. "Can I say, I really, really prefer this long form for the test?"

Haas agrees. "It's better than the 'jump straight to the _Maru_' version. Takes more time, but we get a much better picture of the kind of CO we're likely to get out of it. So far she's being remarkably cautious. Going in fast but not top speed, saving her energy in case she has to make a quick escape, and I like her idea to pre-clear the cargo bays."

* * *

The conn officer, a Bolian named Brota, announces, "Exiting warp in five, four, three, two, one, _mark_!" The warp field collapses and we drop to sublight.

"Tess, charge up the weapons but don't arm them yet. Sensors, do we have a fix on the _Maru_?"

"Aye, sir," the blonde human petty officer manning the station answers.

"'Ma'am', Petty Officer Daniels. 'Ma'am.'"

"Sorry, sir. Ma'am."

I ignore the apology. "Conn, take us in. Quietly, now. Rig ship for silent running." The intercom chirps. "Yes?"

"Commander, this is Commander Hackett. Do you mind if we skip ahead?"

I think for a second. "I don't see why not. Bring us up to a thousand kilometers from the _Maru_."

The plot on Tess's console fast-forwards. By the simulator's clock we've been at battle stations for almost an hour, but it's more like twenty minutes real-time (we skipped ahead during the warp trip, too). As we close on the _Maru_ Daniels announces, "Captain, I'm picking up a disturbance."

"Source?"

"Not sure yet. Let me try to clean it up—oh, Hell. Reading four D7-class cruisers decloaking near the _Maru_!"

"_Phekk_. Hail them."

"They're jamming subspace!" the communications officer says. "Locking weapons!"

"Use the lightspeed comms!"

"Channel open!"

I switch to _tlhIngan Hol_. I'm a little rusty but the words tumble from my mouth in a rush. "_SuvwI'pu' tlhIngan batlh, eleya, torvo puqbe' jIH. _ _HoD_ _Constitution yuQjIjDIvI' 'ejDo'. jatlh neH._" I switch the microphone to the intercom and order the forward sections of the saucer evacuated in case we have to make a quick escape.

* * *

Admiral Arkad's eyes widen at the guttural, phlegmatic sounds of accurate, if somewhat badly accented, _tlhIngan Hol_ issuing from the Bajoran's mouth. Thrass sees it and grins. "Part of Militia basic training, ever since the war in the early Seventies. Recruits have to demonstrate a minimum proficiency in Klingonese and Cardassian to qualify for offworld."

"Well, she's not bad for an amateur," Haas remarks.

Steve comments, "I think we goofed on the enemy selection. Changing the subject a bit, what's up with her ordering the forward sections cleared out?"

* * *

I've seen better-looking Klingons than this guy, G'Sten, he said his name was. I've seen worse-looking, too, but not many. "Federation _petaQ_, your friends trespass on Klingon territory! They will die, and you will die with them!"

"My friends have no quarrel with the _tlhIngan wo'_ and neither do I."

"You speak the lies of a _taHqeq_!"

"G'Sten _ghay'cha' baQa'!_" I shoot back. Something I learned working on Deep Space 9 for six months: If a Klingon insults you, you insult him right back. But I'm mostly trying to draw his attention away from the PADD I just surreptitiously passed to Tess, and without a word she types a series of commands into her console.

G'Sten seems slightly impressed. "You swear well, _bajorngan_. But it will not save you."

I don't have time to think right now why a 23rd century Klingon can recognize my species, because Tess just announced, "Ready, captain!"

"_Hab SoSlI' Quch!_" I bellow at the screen, just to get the last word in for laughs, then cut the channel. "Tess, hit it! All hands, brace for impact!"

"Firing!" And all Hell breaks loose as six things happen at once. Our rear shields vanish and a spread of photon torpedoes erupts from the forward launcher, streaking towards the Klingons. T'Var announces the nav deflector and SIF are at maximum power, and there's a rumble through the hull as streams of blue-hot particles lance out from the broadside phaser mounts.

At the _Maru_.

The _Constitution_ leaps forward, rolling hard to port, the transporters activate the moment the _Maru_ clears the rear shield arc, and then there's a godawful noise and jolt as our front end smashes straight through the narrow fuselage of the center-most battlecruiser just after a torpedo detonates on its shields. As we climb towards _c_ I hear a muffled voice behind me holler something that sounds like "Holy shit!"

"Transport complete, Captain," T'Var announces. "Our shot disrupted their shields as predicted."

"Tess, gas the cargo bay!"

"Venting anesthizine gas!"

* * *

"Holy _shit_! Did you see that?!" Hackett exclaims.

"Yes, I saw it," Sivuk says. "She let the computer handle the job for her."

"No, I mean what she did to that battlecruiser! The only other captain I've heard of pulling something like that off was Picard back in '66!"

* * *

"Damage report!" I bark as we climb to warp 5.

"Severe structural damage to … evacuated sections only," T'Var reports. If I didn't know better I'd think I heard some surprise in her voice.

"Captain," Brota says, "we're heading straight into Klingon territory! Additional enemy ships detected, two minutes out!"

"Hold course for fifteen more seconds!"

"Three D7 battlecruisers in pursuit! Time to overhaul, thirty seconds!"

"They came about faster than I expected," Tess comments.

"Yeah, they did," I agree. Something feels wrong but I can't put my finger on it yet. "Conn, crash translate to sublight and give me a Crazy Ivan! Point us straight to the border!"

Our warp field shatters in a colossal thunderstorm of released energy and Brota fires the maneuvering thrusters. White-hot fire blazes from the tips of the nacelles and the ship flips end-for-end and yaws thirty degrees to starboard. "Maximum possible warp! Your turn, Bynam!"

The intercom crackles, "Warp 9.5! It's the absolute highest this thing can handle but you'll bake the core in ten minutes!"

"Conn, warp 9.5! Hit the gas!" The simulator screams around us as the warp drive overcomes the inertia pushing the ship almost the opposite direction. The stars blueshift and we rocket past the light barrier.

"Pursuing vessels changing course!" Daniels shouts.

"Can they intercept?"

"No, but they're coming about to pursue! Five minutes to the border!"

"Tess, fire up the torpedo transfer tubes. Start firing torpedoes set for proximity detonation out the aft launcher, random angles, random intervals."

"We've only got 96 torpedoes left!"

"Just do it! Give them as many reasons as possible not to follow us!"

"All right, firing aft tube!"

Sudden inspiration hits me. "Wait, keep four torpedoes back!" I hit my intercom. "Bynam, get a work crew to the forward torpedo magazine! I want you to refit four torpedoes with screamer warheads to act as decoys!"

"All right, I'm on it!"

* * *

"Impressive," Sivuk comments. "Instead of one single strategy, she is combining several smaller tactics. Treating the Klingons as an obstacle instead of the objective, mining her trail with torpedoes, preparing electronic countermeasures to hide her ship—"

"Yeah, and now the computer's starting to cheat more openly to make up for it," Arkad says, noting the readouts.

* * *

"Two Klingon battlecruisers still in pursuit! Entering extreme torpedo range! Time to overhaul, three minutes!"

"They're not taking the hint, ma'am," Tess comments. "And I'm running out of torpedoes."

Bynam's voice comes through the intercom. "Decoys ready!"

"Tess, fire for effect and deploy decoys!"

A vicious grin lights up her face, and in a distinctly pleased voice she says, "Aye, Captain." Four torpedoes scream out of our forward tube and take up random positions dozens of kilometers off.

Then T'Var speaks up. "Captain, a word?"

"Hm?"

"I have been going over the data and the pursuing battlecruisers are closing too fast."

"I know! We won't make it to the border at this rate unless we drive them off!"

"No, ma'am, I mean they are closing _impossibly_ fast. The D7A _Akif_-class and D7C _K't'kara_-class were physically incapable of achieving—"

"—of going that fast, yes, I know." _That's_ what was bothering me earlier. I start to bark another order, then pause. My objective is to get the crew of the _Maru_ to safety. And if I'm right about what's going on, that means it's time to change things up again. I press the intercom key. "All nonessential personnel, evacuate to the saucer section! Space combat personnel, head for the secondary hull! Prepare for emergency saucer separation!"

The holographic component of the simulator flickers and the walls compress a bit to simulate us shifting to the auxiliary bridge. We lose about three minutes on the clock.

"All sections report ready," T'Var confirms.

"Enemy ships nearing our effective torpedo range, their extreme range! Missile separation!"

"Blow the bolts, drop the saucer! Prophets go with you, Lieutenant Commander Baines!"

It's a little-known fact that _Constitution_-class starships were capable of saucer separation. The reason it's little-known, however, is because they didn't do it much: Unlike a _Galaxy_- or _Odyssey_-class ship, the maneuver relied on explosive bolts and wasn't reversible without a shipyard. A dull _thud_ reverberates through the hull and the saucer breaks free and continues on the same course, the impulse engines adjusted to maintain the warp field for a short distance as it clears ours.

"Captain, we cannot combat two D7-class starships without the saucer phasers," T'Var informs me.

"No, but we can hold them off," I answer. "Conn, begin Sulu Flip!"

For the second time in ten minutes Ensign Brota reverses our direction, this time without dropping out of warp. The saucer-less Connie hull tilts backwards, warp field churning and structure screaming. We pass vertical and—

"Captain, look!"

My eyes shoot to the plot as a third ship, this one a _VoDleH_-class battleship, decloaks in our path and catches us in the midsection with a barrage of heavy disruptor fire. Sparks and smoke fly all over the bridge as I frantically order Brota to drop to sublight, but it's too late and the screen turns to static. Game over.

I sit in the chair for a moment, glaring at the screen blinking a message that I'm dead. "_Sher hahr kosst. Phekk'ta yepal y'kren al'borea tash kelot!_" I get out of my chair, storm up the stairs at the back of the room, and throw open the door to the monitoring booth. "What the _phekk_ was that?!"

"Commander! Stand down!" Captain Thrass orders, warningly.

I hear T'Var and Tess come up behind me. "You cheated!" I growl accusingly at the room.

"You have missed the point of the test, Captain," Sivuk says.

"Enlighten me, sir," Tess requests.

"The purpose," Admiral Arkad replies, "is to judge your reaction to a hopeless situation. Can you, as a commanding officer, maintain control of yourself and your crew, in the face of the fear engendered by certain death?"

"Sir, I've _already_ experienced the 'fear of certain death'. _Twice!_" I point to the scar on my face. "You think I got this because my hairdresser fouled up? There's a matching one on my stomach, Admiral! And I fought the damn _Borg_ two weeks ago!"

"What about the fear engendered by inescapable mission failure?" Sivuk intercedes. "Please do not tell me that you do not believe in no-win scenarios. I have heard that before."

"Oh, I believe in no-win scenarios," I shoot back. "I also believe they mostly take place because somebody _fucked up_! If you do your prep work properly, you don't get _into_ a no-win scenario!" I take a breath and finish, "It wasn't a fair test, sir."

"The universe is not fair, Commander Kanril," Sivuk answers.

"Your logic is fallacious, sir," T'Var counters.

"Excuse me?" Hackett says in surprise.

"False analogy fallacy," I explain. "The universe doesn't _cheat_."

T'Var continues, "Any simulated scenario relies on the participants' willing suspension of disbelief in order to be an effective assessment. However, the D7 battlecruiser that pursued us across the border achieved a velocity that was physically impossible for a ship of that class. With the amount of power that Ensign Ehrob was able to get out of the engines the Klingons should not have been able to come about in time to overhaul before we reached safety, and yet it did. And the _VoDleH_-class was not capable of cloak. This was illogical, and the simplest explanation is that the simulation program cheated. Kanril and I discovered this, deduced that the simulation was unwinnable, and our willing suspension of disbelief was broken. Ergo, the accuracy of this simulation as a personality test is questionable. _Quod erat demonstrandum._"

"Wait a minute, back up a bit," Hackett interrupts. "How do you know what a ship that went out of service over a century ago was capable of?"

I answer, "Well, you told me I'd be flying a Connie and that the _Maru_ would be lost in Klingon space. That told me the time period this thing was set in and who I'd probably be fighting, so I hit the library."

I see Captain Thrass grinning behind Arkad. "I warned you guys not to underestimate her. Relax, Kanril. As far as I'm concerned you passed the test."

"Let's not be hasty," Arkad corrects his colleague. "Commander, you're dismissed for now. Report to my office in one hour."

"That's _it_?"

"Dismissed, Commander," Sivuk confirms.

"Aye, sir." I snap to attention, turn on my heel, and leave.

Outside, I pause for a moment. "Hey, T'Var? Thanks for backing me up in there."

"Your temper will one day get you into serious trouble, Commander. I was hoping to defuse the confrontation."

"Call me Captain. Or Eleya. Because if I can swing it, assuming I actually passed the test I want you as my operations officer."

"On the _Kagoshima_? I accept, Captain Kanril."

"I'm in, too, if you'll have me," Biri agrees. "I'm getting bored with lab work. I haven't had that much fun since my third host got into that dancing contest on Ragesh III. I like your style, too. Never give up, even when the situation is unwinnable."

I look at the Trill's friendly brown eyes and raise my eyebrows. "You _knew_? And you didn't tell me?"

"Of course I didn't tell you!" she laughs. "Like T'Var said, it's not an accurate test if the one being tested knows it's unwinnable. I've been in the chamber, uh, six times, I think? Yeah, six, twice as me, four times as Devon."

"Well, what did you do?"

"I didn't. I've never had to take the test. I'm in sciences and Devon wasn't even an officer." T'Var looks at her. "Noncom, transporter guy," Biri explains.

"Well, let's hope I made a good impression. I just got this command; I don't want to lose it."

* * *

"She's crazy," Haas comments later in Arkad's office, still somewhat in shock.

"Agreed," Sivuk says. "She reacts like a female sehlat whose cubs are threatened."

Haas shakes her head. "Unfortunately for us all, crazy's something we need right now, what with the Borg reappearing and the Klingons stepping up their war effort. Her tactics were innovative and in my opinion spot-on. Especially the part where she turned her torpedoes into a minefield—I've never even heard of that one before. If the computer wasn't designed to cheat she would've won outright. As it was she still got half the crew and passengers out, and saved her non-combat personnel as well. Also got a Klingon boarding party but she gassed 'em before they could get their bearings."

"I'm more worried about her temper," Arkad says.

"She flew off the handle because she felt cheated," Thrass counters. "How did _you_ feel when you took the test?"

"It's not her having the emotion I'm concerned about, it's what she did with it. One of these days she's going to lose it in front of someone less forgiving."

"Eh, we'll jump off that bridge when we come to it," Steve. "No denying that she's a good tactician, though, right?"

Arkad shakes his head. "No, and I think she handled herself well up to the point where the computer decided it needed to drop a damn battleship on her head to stop her. And I like that she tried diplomacy first, for what little good it did her. Thrass, do you want to do the honors?"

The Andorian nods and presses the key for the intercom. "M'raak, send the commander in."

Admiral Arkad's secretary, a black-furred Caitian petty officer in ops yellow, opens the door for me and I walk in and come to attention. "Brevet Lieutenant Commander Kanril Eleya, reporting as ordered."

"At ease, Commander," Arkad says. "Let's get one thing straight, first. Your conduct after the test was incredibly disrespectful and it will not fly outside of this room. Am I clear on that?"

"Yes, sir."

"Get a handle on that temper of yours or you won't keep your command for very long."

I freeze in place and start to feel hopeful. "You mean—"

The admiral presses a key on his console and a near-indestructible sheet of archival plastic materializes in the replicator. "I'm making your brevet rank permanent and authorizing you as commanding officer, USS _Kagoshima_ NCC-91855. When your ship gets out of the yard next week you are ordered to report to Vice Admiral Sivana Dica at Starbase 179. You can take your frustration out on the Klingons."

"I still don't have a full command staff, sir."

"One will be provided before you ship out," Sivuk answers.

"I have a couple of requests, actually, sir." Admiral Arkad gestures for me to continue. "I'd like Lieutenant T'Var for my ops officer and Lieutenant Riyannis as head of sciences. And I want to keep Lieutenant Phohl on as my XO."

"She's already your tactical officer," Commander Haas points out.

"She wants both jobs, sir."

The admiral lets out a breath. "I'll have to clear it with Command, but I don't have any personal objections if you think she can handle it." I nod. "All right, then. Anything else?"

"No, sir."

"Very well. Take the rest of the weekend off, but starting Monday morning, for your penance"—this said shaking his finger at me—"you're playing teacher's aide in Captain th'Shvrashli's ES 300 class until your ship is ready."

"Aye, sir." The Andorian's antennae twitch in a manner I've learned means they're pleased.

"Dismissed."

* * *

**Author's Notes:** Yes, January 27, 2407 really is a Saturday. Ain't Wolfram Alpha grand?

Part of this was inspired by some of the points raised in the thread that inspired this prompt. The simulator cheats to keep you from winning. You overcome one cheat, it starts to increase its cheating next time. Keep changing tactics, and it keeps cheating to the point where you lose WSOD on the part of the test subject. Also something hfmudd said about xir science officer: "She'll take her chances with a fair and impartial universe, which might hand you a no-win situation by chance, but one where the 'gods' play with loaded dice offends her."

Thanks to sander233 for help with Eleya's _tlhIngan Hol_.

The "Sulu Flip" is a reference to something Hikaru Sulu pulled off in Diane Duane's _My Enemy, My Ally_. He put the _Enterprise_ through a 180 degree backflip at high warp in order to bring the forward phasers to bear on a warbird.


End file.
